No Laughing Matter (Level 5 PCs)

Laugher’s Gorge occupies a stretch of the canyon that runs through the local badlands, named for the haunting laughter that occasionally erupts from its depths. When travelers using the road past the gorge become infected with cackle fever, it’s up to the party to find out what’s causing the mysterious laughing sickness. Though they find a pack of gnolls infesting the canyon, it’s no joke when they discover who (or what) is pulling the strings!

Laughter and humor are central themes in No Laughing Matter. The players are met with the will of a prankster god, riddles to solve, and may be forced to come up with some jokes of their own. But this isn’t an adventure to take lightly. If the party underestimates Laugher’s Gorge, they may find themselves infected with cackle fever… and there’s nothing funny about that!

Dungeons on Demand is a line instant dungeons you can drop into your campaign, each is designed for 4-5 player parties of specified levels, and each dungeon is complete with a back story, hand drawn maps, traps, puzzles, and reference information to monsters and treasure. You can customize each one to fit in your campaign however you wish, and each one can be played through in one or two gaming sessions.

EVERY DUNGEONS ON DEMAND ADVENTURE FEATURES

Player Safe Maps - Maps for each encounter area (and the dungeon as a whole) come prepared for both the players and GMs. Helpful for when you want to give the party something to visualize without revealing hidden monsters, traps, and treasure.

Quick Reference Icons - GM maps are fully labelled and complete with quick reference icons. These icons give you all the information a GM needs for an encounter area - whether there's monsters lurking to fight, traps the party must contend with, hidden treasure, NPCs to talk to, or a puzzle they must solve. Each icon is given a complete description in the encounter break down.

Combat Difficulty Gauges - Each encounter description provides detailed information on how monsters perform in battle. These gauges allyou to quickly determine how difficult a fight will be for an appropriately leveled party. These gauges rate an encounter from 1 star (very easy) to 5 stars (deadly). Complete with core rulebook page references and full descriptions of custom monsters!

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Dungeons on Demand is not affiliated with Wolpertinger Press or Dungeon-on-Demand, but you should definitely check them out!

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Author Dan Coleman has been a Dungeon Master for two decades now, first picking up the dice with second edition. He can tell you what THAC0 stands for, a first level fighter's saving throw against rods, staves, and wands, and why players get excited to find "Treasure Type H."

Since then he's been through every new edition, and has written custom classes, spells, items, adventures, and system mods for each. By day he's a humble graphic designer and illustrator, but by night he's a full time role-player and game designer.

Take a look here: https://www.facebook.com/dcolemanproductions

This title is included in Dungeons on Demand: Volume Two!

The second volume ofDungeons on Demand includes the these four dungeon adventures:

Mischief Makers - Level 2 Adventure Dungeon

No Laughing Matter - Level 5 Adventure Dungeon

That Sinking Feeling - Level 9 Adventure Dungeon

Old Habits - Level 13 Adventure Dungeon

It also includes the following supplements:

NPC Codex - Gaming Supplement

Cities and Towns - Gaming Supplement

Do you like Dan's work? Check out MajiMonsters, a monster-catching, fantasy RPG!

I noticed in one encounter the Gnolls include Gnoll Cacklers that are gnolls that are stronger than normal Gnolls, Gnoll Pack Lords and have the same hit dice as a Gnoll Fang of Yeenoghu. Pretty tough monsters. Plus they wield maces, not spears like their brother gnolls.

Where do these come from? How do I explain them? Do normal Gnolls that become infected with Cackle Fever turn into these? For instance, Area J has 10 Gnolls, 5 of which are infected with Cackle Fever. Should these five be Gnoll Cacklers? Or are Gnoll Cacklers a unique monster that only appear once in the dungeon?

Great module by the way.

Thanks,

Jim

Dan CAugust 16, 2018 12:11 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

James, I wanted to apologize for the delay in reply. It seems I only get notifications for comments about 75% of the time, so I've been going back and looking for any I've missed (otherwise I don't notice them unless I happen to be reviewing the product page).

I'm sure you're past it, but for anyone wondering I'll help clarify: The gnolls in Area J are your regular gnolls cited from the Monster Manual, just add the Cackle ability described under Cackle Fever. Gnoll Cacklers are tougher gnolls advanced to CR 4, their statistics block is in the back of the module. They are certainly tougher than normal!

Jamie MJuly 09, 2017 9:52 am UTC

Dan, I've just bought three of your compilations, loving the stuff.
Just wondered about using it in roll20, have you any advice on recommended map sizes?
Struggling to get my grid to fit.

Dan CJuly 09, 2017 11:43 am UTC

PUBLISHER

Hi Jamie, glad you're enjoying them so far. Most people use the cut up area maps for each encounter; they should be cropped on the vertices so they can scale to Roll20s grid. However, you can also load the Fog of War map and prepare that way. Each FoW nap is gridless and let's you adjust the scale however you like. You'll need to use Roll20s FoW feature to hide content until the party discovers it, but may GMs prefer this method to preparing several individual maps. Thanks for your support!!

Ben FFebruary 05, 2016 5:35 pm UTC

Do you think this could be played through in a 3-3.5 hour session?

Dan CFebruary 05, 2016 5:38 pm UTC

PUBLISHER

Ben, it's not likely you'll get to all the content in that amount of time. If you want to explore all the areas, with all of the combat and NPC interaction, you'll likely need at least 2 sessions of 3-4 hours each to complete it.

If you're only working with 3.5 hours at most, my recommendation would be to remove some of the combat encounters. Remember, each of these modules has enough content for the party to gain a level, so there's quite a lot to sort through!

Ben FFebruary 05, 2016 5:57 pm UTC

Yea, I figured as much. Just wondering if you thought the story could be completed while still skipping some stuff (without having actually seen the module, not sure if that would be possible, or if every encounter is necessary)

Cody JSeptember 17, 2015 10:50 pm UTC

PURCHASER

This was my first Dungeons on Demand purchase, and I'm quite impressed. This is easily the best third-party (and maybe even official) 5E adventure I've seen. You've got a new customer - keep up the good work!

Great adventure and layout. From a DM's perspective this was easier to plan for than the WotC supplements with how well laid out the document was. Ran this adventure with my roll20 group and everyone had a blast [...]

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